Chapter IX
IX
Nearly all witches are born to long-standing magical families, and the Order gets most of its recruits from members who put forth their own children.
The Order occasionally finds children outside of these lineages who are born with magical resonance, which is observable from birth due to their possession of the distinctive ocular Lumen.
The Order does not extend entrance to, nor does it train, those who claim themselves “Made witches.” Though these individuals possess certain abilities, and though their eyes display a variation of the Lumen, they are not eligible for admittance to the Acheron Order, owing to the risks associated with uncontrolled expressions of Veil magic.
Ruled by their emotions as they are, these humans rarely possess the skill to control their own abilities.
While some Elders have campaigned for the admission of these so-called Made witches, no such attempts have succeeded.
These individuals do not rely on ritual or spellwork and are thus unbound by the rules that govern the practice of the ancient arts.
Their abilities, while occasionally surpassing those of even powerful Born witches, are fickle, and the expression of Veil magic is equally likely to lead to the death of the practitioner and those around him as it is to further his goal. The risks, in sum, are too great.
—William Ruskin, A History of the Acheron Order (New York, 1935)
The Sentinels met for training in a small, unoccupied Level Eight classroom. They didn’t have a dedicated space of their own, according to Sarah, because they rarely needed one. Extraordinary circumstances, Sarah said, meant they were training now more than ever.
Vic thought of Xan’s admission last night that the Order was careening toward war with a rival group intent on destroying them. He’d looked vulnerable as he said it, like he feared the possibility even as he accepted it.
He did not look vulnerable today.
Xan stood at the front of the small classroom with his arms crossed in front of his chest. The posture exaggerated the cords of muscle in his arms, which Vic avoided paying special attention to as she sat down.
With his feet shoulder-width apart and planted firm, he looked more prepared to leap into a fight than to lecture at bored-looking Sentinels.
Again he wore the all-black ensemble Vic was beginning to suspect were the only clothes he owned, and he glowered at each and every person who entered the room.
Vic had been looking forward to Sentinel training all day, but her face fell when Sarah led her into another classroom.
She was tired of class. She wanted to beat someone up—or get beaten up, she wasn’t picky.
Vic and Sarah had already attended Elder Thompson’s presentation about the origins of magic and the way that the “originally learned practice of magic became the genesis of a line of Born witches that could be traced all the way to the modern ranks of the Order.” Sarah had fallen asleep.
When her snores drew the attention of recruits several rows ahead of them, Vic had kicked her.
After more than two hours of fighting to stay awake, Vic had suffered through another go-round with the rocks.
She’d made no progress, other than proving to herself that she could stare for at least two minutes before needing to blink.
When Elder Thompson wasn’t looking, Sarah had levitated the stones across the room, exploding them behind unsuspecting recruits.
Henry had made a point of walking to class with Vic, though his chipper mood soured throughout the lesson.
He struggled to break more than a crack in the stone in front of him, and Vic could tell that he was frustrated.
Vic caught him smiling only once—when a dust-covered Elder Thompson yelled at Sarah for performing the lesson’s task perfectly, directly over his head.
Vic and Sarah were among the first to arrive for Sentinel training, and they sat near the front.
Xan must have warned the Sentinels that Vic would be here, because none of them looked at her with surprise.
Most of their eyes slid over Vic as she entered, though a few gazes lingered in curiosity or anger.
May Lin glared at Vic when she sauntered into the room and took a seat in the last row.
After that Vic felt a hostile gaze boring into the back of her head.
There were far more Sentinels than there were Level Eight recruits, and they crammed into the classroom until they sat shoulder to shoulder, some huddled on the floor.
Xan stood at the front of the room holding a notebook—his hand spanned its entire width, Vic noted with a jolt of interest—and put on a pair of wire-frame glasses that he pulled from his pocket.
A delighted huff of laughter escaped her at the sight of this huge man with tiny reading glasses.
Sarah shot her a confused look, and Vic pulled herself together.
She was here on a provisional basis—Xan’s disapproving glance made that obvious—and Vic was not about to get kicked out for laughing at the Chief Sentinel.
“Three case studies to start the day,” Xan announced. “Then we’ll break into squads and get to training.”
Unlike the recruits, none of the Sentinels brought materials to take notes, and most of them leaned against the backs of their seats, looking resigned. Vic slid her notebook back into her bag.
Glasses perched atop his perfect nose, Xan read aloud. Vic bit back a smile.
“The year is 1807,” he began. “Setting is a community on the outskirts of the Canadian wilderness, which the Order suspects has been overrun by Orcans. An Elder”—Xan checked his notes—“John Colton, takes a corps of Sentinels to stamp out the infestation, but they thought the problem was a handful of loose Orcans, not a legion. By the time Colton realizes his mistake, twelve Sentinels are dead. After that, it takes almost two months to get eyes inside the village. What they found was a ghost town ‘overrun with the living dead,’ according to Colton. When the Order finally cleared the town, Colton noted with surprise that the Orcans seemed to have the forethought and self-control necessary to spare some of the humans, so as to provide fresh meat for later. He called this ‘an invaluable gift, dampened only by the needless loss of Sentinels required to extirpate the horde.’ ”
“Jesus Christ,” Vic muttered with a grimace, though no one else in the room reacted.
“Now,” Xan said, lowering his notes and eyeing the Sentinels over his glasses. “Can any of you tell me what happened?”
A curly-haired Sentinel in the first row raised her hand. “Was there any evidence of forbidden practice among the villagers before the swarm?”
Forbidden practice?
“Not that we know of,” Xan replied, “but we can’t rule it out.”
“It sounds like draugrs to me,” another Sentinel replied, this time a man of about thirty sitting behind Vic. “If corpses were coming back.”
“I don’t think draugrs would know to save meat for later,” the woman replied.
“Ellie’s got a point,” Xan said. “What else could it be?”
Vic watched the Sentinels consider the question. Morbid the topic might have been, but this was far more interesting than the Level One courses.
“It must have been more than one kind of Orcan,” May said from the back row. “Reanimated corpses are a red herring.”
“You think corpses were coming back by coincidence?” the man behind Vic asked.
“It could be incidental, yes. If there were witches in the village using forbidden magic, they could be brought back no matter what killed them.” Turning to Xan, May said, “It sounds like a Gosk of some kind. Maybe a fugosk or a norgosk.”
“And how would you kill them?” Xan asked.
“Carefully.”
A few of the Sentinels huffed laughs, but Xan shot May a look and she continued. “They’re weak between the plates of armor on their backs. You’d have to stab them. As I said, carefully.”
Xan nodded. “The record on this case isn’t great, but I think you’re correct.”
“Give someone else a shot next time, May,” one of the men called, and May put a hand up in an appeasing gesture. She leaned back in her seat as if welcoming the others to go ahead.
“Next case,” Xan said. “Colonial America. Witnesses report that a young man arrived barefoot and bleeding after walking from the nearest settlement, some fifty miles up the Connecticut coast. The teenager had a strange mark burned into his chest and a series of deep gouges in his abdomen. According to the kid, he was part of an exclusively male settlement, mostly indentured servants or workhouse occupants from London. A brutal winter, exacerbated by the settlers’ poor preparedness, left more than half their number dead.
Among the survivors was a self-proclaimed witch doctor, who began using rituals with the participation of the other colonists.
Despite initial success summoning fire and killing game, something started to hunt the settlers during the night.
The teenager called them ‘men who were not men.’ ”
Xan lowered the notebook and looked at the class.
This time Sarah volunteered an answer. “Demons,” she said. “Plain and dry.”
“How do you know?”
Sarah counted the reasons on her fingers. “They look like people, they hunt at night, and the burn on the kid’s chest would be consistent with a demon attack.”
“Demons?” Vic whispered to Sarah. “Like Bible demons?”
“Same name, different idea,” Sarah whispered back. “The Christians named a lot of Orcans in the early days.”
Vic’s head spun.
“What would you do?” Xan asked, looking annoyed at Vic’s interruption as Sarah refocused on him.
“Assuming I’m the colonial-era Order?” Sarah said. “Nothing.”
“Nothing?” Xan asked, eyebrows raised.
“Demons probably killed all the settlers and went back to Orcus.” She turned to Vic and added, “Unlike most Orcans, demons don’t like to stick around after they hunt.”